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The second national Reclaiming Vacant Properties: Building Leadership to Restore Communities cultivates leaders within diverse backgrounds — residents, community development practitioners, elected officials, the financial community, safety professionals, academics, real estate professionals, and many others — to make our neighborhoods stronger and healthier.

The conference, sponsored by the National Vacant Properties Campaign and cosponsored by the Louisville Metro Government and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, will be held June 1-3 in Louisville, Kentucky. An all-star cast of invited speakers includes Carol Coletta of CEO's For Cities, Marc H. Morial of The Urban League, Bruce Rasher of CB Richard Ellis Inc., Dan Kildee of the Genesee County Land Bank, and Louisville's own Mayor Jerry Abramson.

More than 600 people attended the first conference in 2007. Don't miss this opportunity to network and share knowledge with those who have been working to create opportunity from abandonment. We hope to see you there!

Proven and ready-to-go ways to create more jobs quickly & responsibly with stimulus dollars

Governors and state departments of transportation around the country are burning the midnight oil to prepare lists of transportation projects that could be funded under President Obama's economic stimulus package, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

While states develop these lists of transportation projects to be funded with stimulus money, Smart Growth America has partnered with state and local groups across the country to release a report showing the many ways the money can be used in each state to address their citizens' transportation priorities and get the biggest bang for the buck.

This report, Spending the Stimulus, lays out 20 ways that state officials can and should spend the federal funding on ready-to-go projects that will address long-neglected transportation priorities while providing speedy and robust job creation and economic recovery.

Tell your Governor to put thousands back to work quickly and responsibly with smart transportation spending. Tell him or her to ensure that the transportation stimulus creates jobs quickly while providing a down payment on a clean, green transportation infrastructure for the 21st Century rather than funding destructive road expansion projects.

Transportation For America: Keeping America Moving

Our national transportation policy has barely changed since the 1950s, when gas was 20 cents a gallon and President Eisenhower launched the interstate highway system. Today, we live in a very different world. The interstates have been built. Americans are paying record prices at the pump and feeling stuck with costly commutes and congestion. Bridges are crumbling. As our population becomes ever more urban, more are breathing dirty air. Our climate is threatened. Too many older, younger and rural Americans are stranded. Volatile areas of the world literally have us over a barrel -- millions of barrels a day, in fact.

That's why Smart Growth America has partnered with more than 80 national, state, and local organizations to press for drastic changes to our country's transportation system through a new campaign: Transportation For America.

Americans need options that are cheaper, faster, and cleaner. And the nation needs a healthy transportation system that is ready for the rapidly changing economy of the 21st Century. Learn more about the campaign and sign your name up with thousands of others who are demanding that our leaders work to provide us a transportation system that is once more the envy of the world.

Our Work

Restoring prosperity to our older industrial cities won't happen by chance. Empowering state and local leaders to embrace growth with a plan. Making roads accessible for everyone and safe for all. Advising governors and state leaders on crucial growth and development issues. Vacant property can comprise 15% of land in large cities. Creating opportunity from abandonment

Smart growth and climate examined by Congress: After months of focusing mostly on fuel-efficiency standards and renewable energy subsidies, Congress this week held its first substantive hearing on the role that smart growth, walkable neighborhoods and transit must play in curbing climate change and oil dependence. Smart Growth America's David Goldberg joined four other panelists in testifying to the House Select Committee on Global Warming and Energy Independence in a hearing entitled "Planning Communities for a Changing Climate-Smart Growth, Public Demand and Private Opportunity." READ MORE


The National Vacant Properties Campaign: Preventing vacancy is solution #1. But for the thousands of properties already sitting vacant as dead space in cities nationwide, the costs are tremendous in decreased property values, rising crime, environmental dangers, and heavy costs to local governments.

But the payoff for redeveloping these properties is great — not only in relieving these pressures, but also in rebuilding social networks and reawakening neighborhood vitality. The work of the NVPC helps bring these vacant properties back. Learn more about the Campaign.


The Restoring Prosperity Initiative: Institutionalized inequality and policies of urban disinvestment helped speed up the decline of many older industrial American cities. Ensuring the continued economic success of our country depends on revitalizing these cities and restoring them to the economic, political, and cultural hubs they once were. Change is possible, but it won't happen by chance. Learn more about the Restoring Prosperity Initiative, and read the full report from the Brookings Institution there. Learn more.

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